Quotes · Skopia

18 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Economic inequality✕clear

Speech · Political speech

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control and the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

2009

★ 1.2

Speech · Political speech

We, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.

Second Inaugural Address of Barack Obama · 2013

★ 1.2

Speech · Political speech

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Warren G. Harding

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

John F. Kennedy

1961

★ 2.0

Only the little people pay taxes.

The New York Times · 1989

★ 2.0

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made: But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

Oliver Goldsmith

1770

★ 3.5

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

1879

★ 3.5

Political literature

When I was poor and I complained about inequality they said I was bitter, now I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want to talk about inequality.

Revolution · 2014

★ 3.5

Inequality...has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalising our lower class.

Equality · 1879

★ 3.5

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price of a paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market and you're a part of it. Yeah, you got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I still got a lot to teach you.

Wall Street · 1987

★ 3.5

The majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

1894

★ 3.6

Speech · Political speech

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1937

★ 3.7

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

The rich get richer, that's the law of the land.

Glengarry Glen Ross · 1992

★ 3.7

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1926

★ 3.8

The poor have little, Beggars none; The rich too much, Enough not one.

Benjamin Franklin

1733

★ 3.9

All inequality that has no special utility to justify it is injustice.

1795

★ 5.4

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 7.2

We are the 99 Percent.

2011

★ 8.8